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ONE DAY MORE SCENE I. CURTAIN RISES DISCLOSING CARVIL and Bessie moving away from sea-wall. Bessie about twenty-five. Black dress; black straw hat. A lot of mahogany-coloured hair loosely done up. Pale face. Full figure. Very quiet. Carvil, blind, unwieldy. Reddish whiskers; slow, deep voice produced without effort. Immovable, big face. Carvil (Hanging heavily on Bessie's arm). Careful! Go slow!... more...

SCENE I It is just after sunset of an August evening. The scene is aroom in a mountain hut, furnished only with a table, benches.and a low broad window seat. Through this window three rockypeaks are seen by the light of a moon which is slowly whiteningthe last hues of sunset. An oil lamp is burning. SEELCHEN, amountain girl, eighteen years old, is humming a folk-song, andputting away in a cupboard... more...

Actus PrimusScena Prima Enter Gaspero, and Melitus MelitusSir, you're the very friend I wish'd to meet with,I have a large discourse invites your earTo be an Auditor. GasperoAnd what concerns it? MelitusThe sadly thriving progress of the lovesBetween my Lord, the Prince, and that great Lady,Whose insolence, and never-yet-match'd Pride,Can by no Character be well exprest,But in her only... more...

FIRST ACT SCENE The octagon room at Sir Robert Chiltern’s house in Grosvenor Square. [The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests.  At the top of the staircase stands lady chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age.  She receives the guests as they come up.  Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illumine a large... more...

THE ALLEVIATIONS OF MONOGAMY. This piece is not an argument for or against polygamy. It is a clinical study of how the thing actually occurs among quite ordinary people, innocent of all unconventional views concerning it. The enormous majority of cases in real life are those of people in that position. Those who deliberately and conscientiously profess what are oddly called advanced views by those... more...

TO THERIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES MONTAGUE,ONE OF THE LORDS OF THE TREASURY. Sir,—I heartily wish this play were as perfect as I intended it, that it might be more worthy your acceptance, and that my dedication of it to you might be more becoming that honour and esteem which I, with everybody who is so fortunate as to know you, have for you.  It had your countenance when yet unknown; and now it is made... more...

INTRODUCTION By craftsmen and mean men, these pageants are played,And to commons and countrymen accustomably before:If better men and finer heads now come, what can be said? The pageants of the old English town-guilds, and the other mysteries and interludes that follow, have still an uncommon reality about them if we take them in the spirit in which they were originally acted. Their office as the... more...

INTRODUCTION The City Bride, by Joseph Harris, is of special interest as the only adaptation from the canon of John Webster to have come upon the stage in the Restoration. Nahum Tate’s Injur’d Love: or, The Cruel Husband is an adaptation of The White Devil, but it was never acted and was not printed until 1707. The City Bride is taken from A Cure for a Cuckold, in which William Rowley and perhaps... more...

ACT I The scene is the managing clerk's room, at the offices of Jamesand Walter How, on a July morning. The room is old fashioned,furnished with well-worn mahogany and leather, and lined withtin boxes and estate plans. It has three doors. Two of themare close together in the centre of a wall. One of these twodoors leads to the outer office, which is only divided from themanaging clerk's room... more...

INTRODUCTION THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the... more...